Nine tips for would-be mentors 
from Mary Jane and Chris Konings.

Tip One: Get started

Find a mentor for you and someone you can mentor. Do it now. The sooner you start the sooner you will reap the rewards.

Tip Two: Be creative

Regular times and days suit the chronologically challenged but there is always room to include something different. Go out for coffee, meet for breakfast, stroll through the botanic gardens, etc. . . .

Tip Three: Share a hobby

There’s no point stressing yourself out by cramming in yet another appointment into an already over full schedule. What are the things you can share – tramping, running, mountain biking, cooking, bungee jumping – with a young person? Christian mentoring isn’t about being intensely spiritual all the time, it’s about building relationships.

Tip Four: Share a task

One mentor I know makes a point of sharing many tasks he performs with a mentee. This can involve training, modeling, listening, sharing or simply enjoying their company. 

Tip Five: Listen

The good Lord gave us two ears and one mouth as a sign that we should listen twice as much. 

Tip Six: Be real

Honesty makes you vulnerable. Much as we like to present ourselves as having it all together, most of us don’t. And that’s OK. In Christian mentoring, the grace of God gets the job done, through us and despite us sometimes. That’s not to say we can be slack - but who knows, perhaps your mentee can minister to you.

Tip Seven: Experiment

Who knows what is going to work? You and your mentor, you and your mentee are unique individuals. So have fun working out what works as you seek to encourage each other to grow in God. Listen to music together and talk about it. Go to movies and tear them apart afterwards. Help out at a food bank one weekend. 

Tip Eight: Keep a record

Write down what you talk about each week, prayer needs, suggestion action, topics discussed. Every now and again read back over what you have written. You will be able to track progress or perhaps track recurring themes. Written records help when you are evaluating and are useful when you come to the end of a mentoring relationship.

Tip Nine: Celebrate

Celebrate when you begin and celebrate when you end. That can be difficult when a relationship doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and it is easy to feel like a failure. Finding ways to celebrate the ending of a mentoring relationship brings closure and can be a way of encouraging each other to develop new mentoring relationships.

© 2000 Churches Youth Ministry Association

Where Are the Mentors?

by Dr. Leong Tien Fock

Just as a sportsman needs coaching to excel in his sport, a Christian needs some form of mentoring (one-to-one or otherwise) to "excel", both in his Christian walk and in his Christian ministry. Actually, the two are inseparable. A good Christian ministry flows out of a good Christian walk. Any Christian mentoring, whatever the emphasis, must include both.

Isn’t mentoring simply good old "discipling"? Strictly speaking, Yes. Why then a new name? I think the new name has arisen because the term "discipling" has been narrowly identified with a certain process, often a programmatic one, that excludes what we include under the term "mentoring".

For instance, when a senior pastor (who is qualified to do so) is helping a junior one develop the necessary pastoral qualities and skills, we do not call that discipling but mentoring. The same is true in the case of one Christian parent helping another develop the necessary qualities and skills in Christian parenting. Of course, one Christian helping another in an area that normally comes under the domain of "discipling", like spiritual growth in general or more specifically, living out the Christian faith in the marketplace, can be called mentoring if the helper is recognised as an "expert" in that area; otherwise the term "discipling" still applies.

We can thus see that it is easy to find "disciplers" but not "mentors". Strictly speaking there should be no such distinction. This situation arises because the Church has been slow in producing disciplers who are of the calibre of what we call "mentors". So though one-to-one "discipling" frequently takes place, genuine one-to-one "mentoring" normally occurs only when a Christian seeks out another who is outstanding in the area he wants to develop in.

We need to have more mentors to attract more mentorees. Not much one-to-one mentoring is happening partly because there are not that many who are qualified to be mentors. Where are the mentors? The Church needs to raise up more and more mentors. In an ideal situation, existing mentors will reproduce themselves so that there will be a good supply of mentors. But in reality today, many qualified mentors, though influenced by many people throughout their lives, were not themselves mentored by any specific individual in the area they are known for. In fact in a changing world, all the more we need more and more pioneers (like in parenting the "X-Generation") who will mentor others in their area of expertise. So we need to look to God to raise up more pioneer mentors in the absence of sufficient mentors of mentors. Let us look at the example of Elijah to see how God Himself raises up mentors.

Although miracles occurred throughout the history of Israel and the Church, there were three periods in the Bible where miracles were unusually common, viz., the times of 1) Moses and Joshua, 2) Elijah and Elisha, and 3) Jesus and the Apostles. We can understand why this is so in the times of Moses and Joshua, and of Jesus and the Apostles; these were respectively the founding of Israel and of the Church. But why the time of Elijah and Elisha?

Elijah was called to minister during the darkest moments in the history of God’s people--Israel under King Ahab (1Kings 16:29-22:40). Although God’s people worshipped Baal in addition to God throughout much of her history, under Ahab the worship of God became banned in Israel and officially replaced by the worship of Baal. God needed an unusual miracle to speak to Israel. It happened when Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel to see whose God could send down fire from heaven to burn up sacrifices. In this context he challenged God’s people to choose between Baal and God.

But Elijah did not grow up with miracles and probably had never seen a miracle. Yet he had to learn to trust God to send down fire in response to prayer, not an easy task. Who was there to mentor him? Nobody. He had to be a pioneer in believing God for miracles. He later became a mentor in this area. His disciple Elisha had a ministry of miracles without going through the kind of training he himself went through. But how did God mentor Elijah?

It all began with Elijah praying for no rain in Israel. He was praying (privately) for a miracle, but it was nothing like standing in public praying for fire to come down. But why did Elijah pray for, of all things, no rain? God promised in Deut 11:16-17 that if His people turned to other gods, he would stop the rain. Elijah was only claiming an explicit promise. It is easier to pray privately with confidence about something God explicitly promised in His Word--Lesson 1.

As the story goes, Elijah had to make public his faith by declaring to Ahab that there would be no rain--Lesson 2. He was then told to hide himself by a brook. God performed a daily miracle by sending ravens to bring him food--Lesson 3. He drank from the brook, but as he saw the brook beginning to dry up because there was no rain, it confirmed to him that God answered his prayer--Lesson 4. The effect of these lessons was to develop in him a deep conviction that he served a miracle-working God. He needed this particular conviction more than the other prophets because of the uniqueness of his calling.

When the brook finally dried up, God directed him to a widow who was preparing the last meal for her son and herself. Here he witnessed God’s miracle in multiplying the food supply--Lesson 5. Finally he put his conviction into practice. When the widow’s son died he prayed and revived him. Now he was ready to confront the prophets of Baal.

So how did God mentor Elijah to pioneer a ministry? The most basic thing was to build into him an unusually deep conviction. In Elijah’s case, the conviction was God’s ability to work miracles. A similar process can happen today. But not everyone is called to pioneer and mentor a ministry of miracles. As a Christian reads Prov 22:6, God may begin to build into him an unusually deep conviction about the need for Christian parenting that ultimately enables him to pioneer and mentor parenting the X-Generation. To another, He may build into him an unusually deep conviction about 2 Tim 3:16-17, that the Bible is relevant and sufficient even in the 21st century, which leads him to pioneer and mentor a ministry based on that conviction.

What this means is that as we read or listen to the preaching of God’s Word, we need to be alert to God impressing upon us some truth or verse in His Word. Elijah’s Lesson 1 was to respond to Deut 11:16-17 by praying for no rain. We must respond appropriately whenever God impresses a verse or truth upon us. This after-all should be the Christian way of life. And who knows, one of these responses may turn out to be our Lesson 1!